Buddhist Marketer

The Big Mac of haircolor

Older sister (Chicago resident):  “What?  You’re getting your hair done in Indiana?”

Gay friend (LA / Paris / London / NYC):  “You’re trusting someone in Indiana to do your hair?”

I spotted angry gray hairs poking up a few weeks ago through my brunette hair forest and knew I needed a color touch-up.  I ran out of time, though, but knew I’d have some hours to kill while home in Indiana (I’m still here).

Fortunately, Redken has a stringent certification process that allows certain colorists to become Redken certified.  Think of it as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for colorists.  I’m not sure if the certification process involves

• Jumping through literal hoops
• Scaling walls
• Making a knockout menu with Thanksgiving leftovers

but I have been present for at least some of their education seminars and must say:  they do not mess around.  Stylists and colorists all over the nation attend their continuing education seminars and the information imparted is top-notch.  I’ve learned so much simply as an occasional interloper and am very impressed by their educators’ ability to own a room.

Plus, let’s be honest:  my regular colorist and stylist are from outside Detroit and outside Columbus, Ohio respectively, so let’s not pretend that New Yorkers have some kind of monopoly on the ability to create great hair.  How many Miss Americas have come from New York state, anyway?

Anyway, Redken’s website has a salonfinder tool that allows you to punch in a zip code and search for certified stylists, elite salons, the whole works.  Which is how I found First Impressions Hair Design at 105 N. Fifth Street in Goshen, Indiana ((574) 534-1806).

I won’t belabor this point but

• My colorist turned out to be a high school classmate of my younger sister and also knows my little brother.  She did an awesome job and I’m glad I said, “Do whatever you think is best; I trust you.”  Thank you, Maria J. Picco!  Move to New York!
• Color costs in the $200 range in NYC before tip but even including tip and some product (Redken’s Smooth Down Sleek Obedience, which helps keep the fuzzy strays at my hairline off my forehead), I was only out $160.
• I feel like Redken’s certification process is the equivalent of the Big Mac.  A Big Mac tastes the same whether you’re at O’Hare or Penn Station and there’s something comforting about that (see also:  Howard Johnson; the suburbanization of America).  If a colorist in the sticks (quote unquote) can do a bang-up job on my color (IMHO; true test is when my friend Rachel inspects), then I feel confident that any colorist certified by Redken is going to rock.

This reminds me, as I type, of the Bar Exam for Marketers.  It would be interesting if one could take a diagnostic that not only assessed tactical skills for marketers but also biases and approaches, so that you could know the temperament of the marketer you’re about to hire.

In a world fragmented by mobility and decreasing strong ties, third-party badges a la Good Housekeeping, Redken, and the like seem to have increasing importance.  These certification mechanisms seem to have supplanted the kind of information that one would’ve gathered over apple pie and tea with the unofficial town mayors circa 1956.

Or circa 2008 in small town Indiana. But, then again, not every town has a family as cool as the Eberly’s.

Nerdy stats joke

Yo, stop bein’ an outlyin’ H₀!

—

At the risk of more deeply etching d0rcas mal0rcas into my forehead, I’m pleased to announce that I’m taking the following classes next semester:

• Regression and forecasting models
• Statistical methods in sampling & auditing

There weren’t any seats left for Linear Algebra and Matrix Methods but after having a discussion with a current Strategy & Economics doctoral student at NYU Stern, the theory and proof classes of yore would be better for me anyway.  Besides, I’ve already taken linear algebra like ninety seven times.

That said, if I end up at Yale for my PhD, I am so taking Math 230 again.  Eigen haz maff do-over!

In breadth, the material covered in the year-long Math 230 sequence is approximately equivalent to that included in Math 120, Math 222, and Math 250 - multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and “vector analysis”, including the theory of differential forms on manifolds. However, Math 230 takes a more fast-paced and rigorous approach to the material. Math 230 is also intended as in an introduction to mathematical proof; students are expected to read, comprehend, and write their own mathematical proofs. Math 230 is for those willing to work harder (and risk lower grades) to go more deeply into the material.

I’m getting excited just thinking about it.  mmmmm

American Politics in the Age of Obama: A New Era?

7:16 p.m. Totally used Facebook status update format for the 7:15 update.

Not even free cookies at the end is encouragement enough to keep paying attention to this drivel.  If I wanted to listen to unsubstantiated blah blah blah I’d have someone read my blog aloud to me.

7:15 p.m. Really wishes someone would come up with How To Moderate and How To Panelist guidelines.

7:12 p.m. This is boring.  We’re getting ready to leave.  It may be cold out but blobby hot air is not very compelling to me.  Does it hurt to prepare a few points, people?

The moderator is more intriguing than the other clowns.

7:10 p.m. Frances Fox Piven referred to Obama as a ’slick politician’; Reed says that you would never want the kind of man who has the ambition to be president as your brother-in-law.  I have wondered what it is that drives Obama to be president.

7:04 p.m. Adolph Reed Jr. underscoring that healthcare system will never work unless we “take the profit motive out of it and take private insurers out of it.”  Also likened Kerry’s plan to that of a Rube Goldberg contraption, which reminds me of the field trip to the Rube Goldberg Competition that Mr. Russell took my Gifted & Talented math class to in sixth grade.  Rest in peace, Brussel Sprouts.

Reed suggesting that Obama is likely to bring an end to the “criminal plunder” of power-drunk Republicans.

7:03 p.m. The black guy is the only hope that this panel won’t completely suck.  He’s like the Obama of the panel.

7:01 p.m. Maybe the problem is that I attended such great lectures last week at Yale.  My bar is too high.  Damned Achievatrons!

6:59 p.m. If this doesn’t pick up soon we’re outta here.  Clearly not everyone who can write a good article knows how to read a room and make a good presentation.  I have no idea what these people are saying.  I suspect they’re simply talking to hear their own voices.  Very disappointing.

6:57 p.m. Okay so apparently that’s Liza Featherstone which means Mills made the introductions in the wrong order.  Are the name tents too much to ask?

6:55 p.m. I hate the false bifurcation between the business elite and progressives.  So rankles me.  Frances Fox Piven Liza Featherstone clearly has never held a position in any corporation and seen business up close and personal.

6:53 p.m.  Frances Fox Piven Liza Featherstone just insulted free marketeers.  Take it easy, woman.

6:51 p.m. Mills-established discussion framework:

• Economy & health
• Foreign policy
• Race & the schools

I heart organized moderators.

6:50 p.m.  Dude, free food after the panel.  Awesome.  (But should CUNY funds really be going towards my free cookies in this economy?)

6:48 p.m. These panelists are really accomplished and yet I’ve never heard of any of them.  Does this mean that even if I become a rockstar academic I will still be totally obscure and unknown?  Oh, boo hoo.

6:36 p.m. They’re checking microphones but I’m curious if any of the panelists will touch upon how Obama’s campaign was beautifully executed in part because he totally listened to my Keep It Real:  Keys For Successful Social Networking thingy-doodle.

6:34 p.m.: I’d like to point out that the cords dangling from the panelist microphones were neatly aligned by yours truly, and one of the check-in girls is using my pen to check people in.  For this I expect to be rewarded with the organizers turning a blind eye to my smuggling in two guests instead of just one.

6:30 p.m.: This post officially pops my live-blogging cherry.  Here’s the official write-up regarding this talk:

The Ph.D Program in Political Science in association with The Center for the Humanities, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Dissent, The Graduate Center Advocate, Global Studies Collective, Africa Research Group, and Social and Political Theory Students Association is pleased to present:

“American Politics in the Age of Obama: A New Era?”

Featuring:

• Adolph Reed, Jr.
• Frances Fox Piven
• Liza Featherstone

Moderated by Nicolaus Mills

Friday November 21, 2008, 6:30-8:30pm

Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Ox E. Moron, PhD?

I’ve been sitting in a library for about six hours straight at this point, cranking on an application.  I just took a break to eat some lunch in the form of a Larabar and some GORP.  I haven’t had any fluids since my cuppa joe this a.m.  So perhaps that informs the tenor of the question I’m about to ask.

What’s up with the term ’social scientist’? Do you know any scientists that are particularly skilled in things social?

I almost feel like being social is a bad thing in academia.  For example, my terrible no-good very-bad schmoozing talents, culled over years of trying to ape the cool kids, makes me appear more socially ept than I really am.  Frankly a day like today (hours in front of my raptop, earplugs in, technology-mediated interactions with humans) is basically ideal, particularly knowing that at some point tonight I’ll have human interactions in real life, in same place, yaddi yaddi yadz.  But if I appear too social, maybe it’ll send a signal of, “Hmm, she’s not cut out for research, she seems to enjoy herself at parties after all.”

?????

Signed,

Prospective pseudosocial scientist

(Not to be confused with prospective pseudo social scientist!)

The emotional roller coaster of seeking approval

I just want to do good work, find mathematical models that can represent observed micro- and macro- behaviors, prove that my idea that in the age of the network economy the importance of distribution > the importance of brand, be able to go off in search of answers to that which has caused me intellectual dissonance during my past ten years in corporate America, and contribute to the universe in a manner that celebrates my comparative advantage.

I hate the idea that I could be locked out of the club, yet again.

I thought the ups and downs of a doctoral program wouldn’t start until I was actually in a doctoral program.

Good heavens; no wonder girls aren’t good at math.  Dwelly McDwellersons!

From the blogosphere, echoing James Baldwin:

When you spend your life hearing that you’re not able to do something because of who you are, even if you want to believe otherwise, there’s going to be part of you that believes it.

My self-apppointed to-do list:

1. Rustle up some paint color chips from Home Depot
2. See if I can squirrel my way into classes skewing math-theory next semester, perhaps at the CUNY Grad Center
3. Find a good game of pick-up ball
4. Bake a pie
5. Try not to dwell on the last problem of the GRE math section, whose blank I didn’t have time to fill in because I accidentally clicked the HELP button and spent half-a-minute trying to figure out how to click out.  Damn you, 790!

If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t care, but I do, and so I do.

* sigh *

Cutting-room floor

In opposition to the conclusion one may draw upon reading my blog, assessing the material contents of my overstuffed apartment, or having one (1) conversation with me, I am a firm believer in editing, establishing boundaries, and adopting constraints.  Rivers of abundance are born from denial (R D R R!).

That said, the following paragraphs are being snipped from my work-in-progress “Camping Out”, which I’ve been working on for almost two years now (off and on).  Lest anyone suspect that me devoting 120 minutes to writing is a deviant violation of my earlier stated autumn priorities, let me go on record and state that I’m allowed a couple of hours once a month to work on personal writing in order to avoid going entirely berserker.

A few paragraphs that should illuminate that insouciance is a state that, for me, shall remain elusive until the earth collides with the moon, are as follows:

By the time I left my hometown high school at sixteen, I had the pretend-boyfriend routine down pat. I imagined an elaborate going-away party for me to be held on the beach of my hometown’s state park lake. Tiki torches, music, perhaps little white lights on a string. Dusk. A cake.

I imagined the cake in great detail. Perhaps I considered this the one component that could actually become reality. I couldn’t imagine the friends that I’d invite (aside from pen pals from nerd camp, I didn’t really have any), or how I’d get to my own party (I couldn’t drive). Let alone Tiki torches (I had no money). But the cake I could handle: chocolate frosting and a colorful design. I remember sitting in my family’s TV room (green shag carpeting, jungle print wall paper and dark fake wood panel accents) and sketching out designs on the back of paper that Dad brought home from work. I think I may have even spent some babysitting money on frosting tips, probably imagining myself practicing the designs in anticipation of my real going-away cake.

But all this obsessing was simply set design for the main show: Sean Skinner – the blonde-haired, blue-eyed jokester who sat next to me in the unfortunately named Mr. Feece’s English class and took a ball point pen to write on the soles of the Adidas sneakers into which I would never grow – was going to kiss me. He was going to be the first. And it was going to be away from the lively, energetic party. He’d walk me down the shore, music fading behind us, and then – was there a full moon? – a kiss.

But I didn’t know what to think about when it came to the details of actual kissing. Nearly a decade of imagining my first kiss and I had no concept of what it entailed. It was just nice to fantasize about it. Something. Anything.

Politics intersection doctoral program applications

I’m so proud to be a Hoosier right now that Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business Department of Business Economics & Public Policy is officially one of the ten doctoral programs to which I’m applying.  Those lucky dogs on the admissions committee!

I seriously, seriously, seriously am amazed and moved by our collective capacity for change.  Even with the massive brain drain that my home state faces, for a Democrat to win is –

Just checked the vocabulary list.  No words suffice.  So I’ll steal one from Dubya:  awesome.

It’s Election Day; do you know where your chads are?

Wanna know what I suspect’s comin’ ’round the mountain?

Click here to find out (will launch a new window that’s suitable for work).

On becoming part of the solution

When I joined Sapient last October, I proclaimed it was the last company I’d ever work for as a full-time employee.  I didn’t know at the time that after a decade-long career as a marketer, I was about to realize what I was meant to do with my life.  My old excuses for being grumpy at jobs (deeply insane management teams, more money elsewhere, deeply unhappy self) weren’t the case at Sapient:  I liked the vast majority of my fellow Sapientes, was compensated in the same ballpark as other offers that came my way, and I no longer use work as an escape mechanism (which is to say, I like myself).  But the hard truth about being a day-in, day-out marketing practitioner is that you don’t really get to ask real marketing questions, and when you do, those around you don’t understand the value of your questions and/or don’t even understand  your question.

A couple of years ago I attributed this to the talent-sourcing mechanism of most companies. Most companies, when trying to hire for a marketer, demand a degree in marketing or advertising. From my January 2007 post “Ad industry decline“:

It’s really hard to get into an agency these days. They require degrees in marketing or advertising. They expect that you know how to operate the metaphorical machinery of the advertising engine. Which is good and fine for executional grunt work. But what about the big picture?

Yale University does not offer a “marketing” or “advertising” degree. It’s a liberal arts institution. It, and places like it, teach you how to think. So that when you encounter a problem — e.g., “How can I shift the brand consciousness in the minds of consumers for this bar of whale fat?” — you understand how to tackle it.

From what I gather, most folks still don’t appreciate the full line of reasoning detailed in the post from which the above quotation is excerpted.  In fact, just this morning the CMO of Sapient, Gaston Legorburu (who, for the record, is a human that has excellent taste in cars and is someone that I like), wrote the following in “Cleaning up the Marketing Department“:

One recent study in the US suggested more than two thirds of marketers had zero formal marketing training or education. Zero!

We at Sapient also recently did a survey and asked marketers whether they thought too few people in marketing have strategic marketing competencies. An incredible 77 percent of those surveyed strongly agreed this was a problem.

This may not surprise you, but it disturbs me. Imagine is 70% of the folks in your finance department did not have a finance degree. Would it make you nervous if 70% of the folks in your legal department did not pass the BAR exam.

Since Gaston is no longer the boss of me, I feel a bit more comfortable running my yap (though truth be told he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person that requires silencing of said yap):  formal marketing training or education does not correlate with strategic marketing competencies. Again from my aforementioned post:

Learning to build a media plan in your pursuit of an advertising degree is akin to learning to make a widget. It has nothing to do with learning how to think, how to tackle and approach problems in an original and expansive way. Anyone can make a widget. Anyone can build a media plan. Anyone can puke out most of the advertising units rolling in front of our eyeballs these days.

And as one of my college roommates asked after I shared that my end game post-doctorate is to be a business school professor, “Isn’t marketing, I don’t know, kind of tactical and very, umm … applicable?”  I immediately thought of the line from Back To The Future:

Yes, definitely, goddammit George, swear!

Right now, as-is, marketing is ghettoized in what I snootily refer to as vocational or trade schools.  Harvard doesn’t even offer a PhD; marketing gets the back-of-the-bus DBA from the ole’ Cantabbers.  Which, in my mind, is a deep disservice to the essential value of marketing.

Capitalism isn’t going away anytime soon, hyperinflation or otherwise, and insofar as poor Karl Marx is losing the battle and humans continue to alienate-from-self by commodification, marketing and commodity and the markets are the means through which humans articulate self. Before the industrial revolution and massive distribution platforms, those who valued self-articulation had the Arts, like literature.  And while I won’t go so far as to say that marketing is today’s literature, I will say that the revolution continues and with it necessarily must come a revolution in the way in which we think about what marketing means and the role it plays in the expression of human authenticity (yeah, I went there).

My little sister complained last night that sometimes I come up with these high-falutin’ ideas and it’s hard to keep up, that sometimes I should just zip it and let her plow through her to-do list.  Fair enough.  I won’t go too far along on this tangent as we all have our to-do lists to return to and I need to find me some lunchtime grub.

But I will say this:  I’m excited to be a potential future formal educator in marketing, so that instead of simply puking out intellectual numpties, these vocational and trade schools can actually graduate humans that understand the complexities of marketing and its interrelationship with the liberal arts (and yes, those diagrams intersect).  And while I have already blogged about what I am up against

… there is no structure or system that can shift an eighteen-year-old disinclined to ask the questions towards becoming a deep thinker. You either have this intrinsic drive or you don’t; no system of rewards or punishments will conjure it.

I also think that if anyone should be on the front lines of molding the next generation of deep marketing thinkers, it should be me.  Perhaps marketing will be appreciated for the liberal art it is, perhaps I’ll help create the “Bar Exam for Marketers” (if you will), perhaps my research will be devoured by intelligent practitioners, perhaps business school students will sell their organs on the open market for a spot in one of my classes.

Perhaps.

But first, I’ve got to rustle up some transcripts for my applications.

And get some darn lunch.

James intersect Alec intersect Anittah

Quoth James Baldwin,

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

From Ian Parker’s “Why Me?” in the September 8, 2008 The New Yorker:

According to Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” and an executive producer of “30 Rock,” [Alec] Baldwin “guards against enjoyment.”  [Says Michaels, to Baldwin;] “‘It’s a great time in your life.  It’s an all-good thing.  And, if you were capable of enjoying it, it would be even better.’”

But we erect our personal pipes and through these structures our realities flow, unadulterated by dismal objectivity.  We believe that which we want to.

Continues Parker:

Then began a period where, in Baldwin’s description, “I ignored all of my instincts and started to do what other people suggested I do, but I knew it was wrong.”  Baldwin is perhaps too easily seduced by a narrative of grand failure, rather than accepting a quieter story of qualified success …

“My life, in some ways, has been a half-measure.  I didn’t commit myself all the way to my marriage and family, because I would have given up more.  And I didn’t go all the way with just being selfish.  I always wonder where my career would be if I was more selfish.”

I worry that my mind will (continue to?) work like this in a couple of decades.

After a flirtation last Saturday with the idea of merging and acquiring my way to a chief executive officership by my early forties, I realized a couple of things:

1. My commitment to pursuing a doctorate is that much stronger
2. I refuse to be intimidated by two years of economic theory
3. I am not the only one lured by all that glitters (/ain’t gold)

I’ll let you figure out how the above paragraph intersects with the following, again from Parker:

His mind turned to the example of Conrad Bain, the actor with a fine theatrical background who came to Philip Drummond, the white father of two adopted African-American boy, on “Diff’rent Strokes.”  Embroidering on this thought, Baldwin imagined an actor who signs up for the quick money of a sitcom pilot quite confident that the show will never be commissioned:  “The agent’s saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s the biggest piece of shit in the history of show business.’  Cut to six years later:  you’re in your dressing room, you’re in season five, and on the wall are posters of you from the New York Shakespeare Festival — these achingly beautiful posters on the wall.  By that point, you’re making a hundred and seventy-five thousand a week, you’ve got a house in East Hampton, you’re getting laid constantly, you’ve got closets of beautiful Italian suits, and you’re got three cars in the garage and you’re paying alimony to your ex-wife who’s living down in Florida.  And you’re doing the same jokes, again and again and again.”

And if you haven’t yet figured out how haunting I find these unrelated Baldwin boy thoughtstreams, I’ll leave you with these words.  Quoth Alec:

When I get onstage … I feel very safe, very protected, very fulfilled.  I go out there, I can’t tell you how happy I am.

An addiction?  A demon to wrestle?

Answers: empty set.